The present invention relates to compounds, pharmaceutical compositions, and to a pharmaceutical method of treatment. More particularly, this invention is concerned with a class of substituted tetrahydro-3-pyridinecarboxylic acids, esters, and amides, pharmaceutical compositions containing the compounds, and to a pharmaceutical method of treatment.
Disorders of cognition are generally characterized by symptoms of forgetfulness, confusion, memory loss, attentional deficits and/or, in some cases, affective disturbances. These symptoms may arise as a result of the general aging process and/or from organic brain disease, cerebrovascular disease, head injury or developmental or genetic defects.
The general decrease in cognitive function which accompanies the aging process is well accepted. The same phenomenon has been observed and documented in many lower mammals, including those routinely employed in pharmacological testing programs for screening and predicting usefulness for particular drugs in higher animals, including humans.
Although disorders of cognition often accompany the general aging process, presenile and senile primary degenerative dementia are the most common causes of mental deterioration in the elderly. It has been estimated that at least ten percent of persons over sixty years of age will eventually suffer severe mental deterioration. A much larger number will experience cognitive decline of sufficient severity to impede their activities.
Many of the symptoms of cognitive disorders, especially impaired memory, are associated with decreased acetylcholine synthesis and the impairment of cholinoreceptive neurons. In the hippocampus and cerebral cortex of patients suffering from primary degenerative dementia for example, the level of the enzyme choline acetyltransferase (CAT) can be reduced by as much as ninety percent. (See Davies et al., The Lancet, 1976 (Vol. 2): 1403; Perry et al., J. Neurol. Sci., 34: 247-265 (1977); and White et al., The Lancet, 1977 (Volume 1): 668-670).
Since CAT catalyzes the synthesis of acetylcholine from its precursors choline and acetyl coenzyme A, the loss of CAT reflects the loss of cholinergic, or acetylcholine-releasing, nerve endings in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex. There is abundant evidence that cholinergic terminals in the hippocampus are critically important for memory formation.
The cholinergic hypothesis suggests that drugs which restore acetylcholine levels or which mimic the action of acetylcholine (cholinomimetic) are effective in correcting this deficit in neurotransmitter chemical and provide treatment of the memory impairment symptom of cerebral insufficiency.
It has been known for some time that the natural alkaloid, muscarine, has the ability to act relatively selectively at autonomic effector cells to produce qualitatively the same effects as acetylcholine. Two related alkaloids, pilocarpine and arecoline, have the same principal sites of action as muscarine and acetylcholine and are thus classified as having "muscarinic" action. Although these naturaly occurring alkaloids are of great value as pharmacological tools, present clinical use is largely restricted to the use of pilocarpine as a miotic agent.
Arecoline (the methyl ester of 1,2,5,6-tetrahydro-1-methyl-3-pyridinecarboxylic acid) is the chief alkaloid found in betel nuts (Areca catechu). Betel nuts have been chewed by natives of the East Indies since early times as a euphoretic. The present pharmaceutical utility of arecoline, however, has been limited to its use as a veterinary anthelmintic agent. Recently it has been demonstrated that arecoline is effective in ameliorating some of the symptoms of cognitive disorders in patients clinically diagnosed as having presenile primary degernerative dementia. Significant improvement was observed in a test of picture recognition after administration of arecoline to patients in a double blind study. (See Christie et al., Brit. J. Psychiatry, 138: 46-50 (1981)).